Perfect lockdown partners flying high with spoken word
The Covid pandemic has now been part of our lives for so long that it is beginning to generate its own creative partnerships, played out entirely online; and one of those is the connection between writer Mikey Burnett and actress Mori Christian, captured in this near-perfect short solo piece inspired by Burnett’s intense fear of flying.
Burnett and Christian first met in an online workshop early in 2020, and have never met in person; yet within weeks, Burnett had asked Christian to record his monologue Lockdown, about middle-class domestic violence, and the two are now hoping to work together on “real world” theatre projects, once the theatres reopen. “As soon as I saw Mori’s work, I knew I wanted her to perform Lockdown,” says Burnett. “Then I wrote The Nervous Flyer with her in mind.”
Christian grew up in Edinburgh, and trained at the RSAMD in Glasgow – now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – in the early 1990s. “To be honest,” she says, “I think I was too young to get as much out of it as I should have.”
After graduation, Christian spent some time in the United States, and enjoyed a successful early career, but then took 15 years out to raise her children. In the early 2010s, she began to ease back into acting; in 2016 she played the lead in AJ Sykes’s awardwinning short film Perfect Worlds, picking up a Best Actress award in Milan. And at Christmas 2020, despite the pandemic, she appeared at the Pavilion, Glasgow, in her first panto, which was filmed live, and streamed across Scotland.
Burnett grew up in Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, and after school spent three years at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, on a creative writing course that improved his technical skills in prose and poetry, but left him feeling he hadn’t yet found his vocation.
After graduation he became a carer for his grandad, an exmilitary man who had seen the National Theatre of Scotland’s Blackwatch,andboughtacopy of the play; and when Burnett began to read, everything fell into place. “I think I’d always had a knack for dialogue,” says Burnett, “and when I saw Gregory Burke’s dialogue written in my language, the language of working-class east of Scotland, I suddenly realised that I should try my hand at writing plays.”
In 2013, Burnett became one of the Traverse 50 playwrights, celebrating the theatre’s 50th anniversary; and he has since had several plays performed around Scotland, including his 2019 Edinburgh Fringe hit In Her Corner, which he has now adapted for a short film.
In The Nervous Flyer, we can see Burnett’s gift for giving a distinctive voice to his characters at its most vivid, as he and Christian bring to life a slightly surreal character called Mary, whose fear of flying amounts to an obsession. Burnett freely admits that Mary is to some extent a self-portrait, but says his priority is to make it increasingly clear to those watching that this person is really quite crazy. “Definitely!” says Christian, clearly relishing the tragi-comic potential of the role.